it into a game mechanic for its eerie
puzzle adventure. You’re stuck in
a sprawling rickety mansion, full of
sinister-looking faces, and you need
to find a way out by solving various
environmental puzzles, some of which
are devilishly hard.
It’s not just a case of moving
around objects, pulling switches andpressing buttons, although there is
a lot of that involved. No, you’ve also
got the furniture scattered around
the mansion that, when in darkness,
will turn into monsters and try to kill
you. One such creature we saw was
a mechanical robot dog that started
chasing us when we approached it.
That was until it ran into a beam of
light and turned into a harmless chest
of drawers, which we then used to
place on a pressure plate.Creature feature
All of the monsters you meet will act
in different ways, but they will all turn
back into whatever inanimate object
they used to be once they come into
contact with light. You’ll need to avoid
them, disable them or use them to
help you solve puzzles. You are given
little to go on to help you solve these
conundrums, and few clues as to
just what you’re supposed to do next.
It’s more about discovery. You will,
however, be notified if you’re doing
something right with the use of subtle
changes within the music.
Solving tough puzzles can be quite
taxing, so the developers scattered
35 paintings throughout the game
for you to collect, 11 of which will
trigger playable mini-games. These
will ease your puzzle fatigue and will
be different to the main game – for
example, one is a rhythm game,
while another will take the form of a
shooting range.
Amanita is the studio behind PC
puzzling classics like Machinarium
and Chuchel, and we’re big fans of its
work. It never fails to pack its games
with charm, from its art style to its
music, so it’s great to finally see the
studio arrive on Xbox. QWe’ve all been there: you wake up in
the middle of night while everyone
else is asleep, and you spot a tall
shadow in the corner of the room. At
first you brush it off and try to get
back to sleep, but your mind just
won’t let it go. You start to think
about it more and more and decide to
chance another look.
As you stare, the shadow begins
to take on a more recognisable form.
Is that a person? Did it just move?
“No, no,” you tell yourself, that was
just your mind playing tricks on you.
Or was it? This called ‘pareidolia’, the
phenomenon of seeing human-like
features in inanimate objects.
For its latest game, Creaks, indie
studio Amanita Design took this
strange human tendency and turnedAt the exact moment the game was revealed, two light bulbs exploded in the house of Amanita’s Lukas Kunce. Creepy...BELOW How many
faces can you
count in this
screenshot? We
can spot at
least 11.
Creaks
Don’t believe everything you
see in Amanita Design’s
suspense-filled Xbox debut
Adam Bryant
PUBLISHER AMANITA DESIGN DEVELOPER AMANITA DESIGN
ETA 2019“You’re stuck
in a sprawling
rickety mansion,
full of sinister-
looking faces”
PREVIEW
More Xbox news at gamesradar.com/oxm THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE 039